


Shadow

by Scribe



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-31
Updated: 2009-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-05 13:23:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribe/pseuds/Scribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Billy doesn't like admitting to himself that he's jealous of something that's not even tangible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadow

The whole thing really comes down to shading. Billy likes to think of it that way because it makes him feel like an artist drawing their relationship. He's always admired artists, real artists who don't need directors and scripts to help them along. The kind of people who can create something from nothing. That's reminiscent of him and Dom again, only backwards. They started with something (friendship, instant connection) and made nothing. Inverse art. It makes him think of someone taking a picture of the two of them and coloring it in in all the wrong places so that it looks like something else.

 

Billy has always loved the sunlight. Stepping outside on a sunny day, whatever the season, always makes him just that much more cheerful. He likes that it is so far removed from his life. It puts him in perspective when he needs it (It can't be that bad if the sun is still shining, he likes to tell himself, and that makes him smile in all but the worst situations). In recent years he's come to appreciate the sun even more for the way it softens the lines around his eyes and on his forehead.

Dom prefers the dark, though you wouldn't know it by the way he courts the spotlight. The darkness allows him to abandon the costume he keeps for fans and friends alike. It doesn't expect him to smile or joke or look or act any certain way. He gets drunk and poetic and calls it she, calls it thrill and comfort and woos it like a lover. Billy doesn't like admitting to himself that he's jealous of something that's not even tangible. He grows to hate the night like a rival nonetheless.

 

Their first kiss was in New Zealand around midnight, both so eager that the lattice of Peter's porch left its pattern on Billy's back and neither of them cared. The stars were cold and Dom's hands burned under his shirt.

"Inside, Dom, please," he had begged, "I want to see you." Dom threaded his fingers through Billy's hair and whispered _I'm here, I'm here_ between kisses, which wasn't at all what Billy meant, but then he slipped one thigh between Billy's and made him forget all about the light.

Looking back on it, Billy wonders why their usually infallible unspoken communication failed so spectacularly to make sense of this one subject.

 

They argue for a few weeks about whether or not to tell everyone about their relationship (there's that word again, something that Billy's first girlfriend had loved to use. He is unquestionably sure that Dom would hate it, make fun of it for being girly and overused, but there's really nothing else to call it. They've never discussed what they have. It doesn't seem like there's ever been a need to.) Billy wants to tell the world. There's a little knot of nausea that forms in his stomach every time he has to consciously restrain himself from touching Dom too much in public, every time he lies to an interviewer- or worse, to a friend. He wants the world to know that he isn't ashamed.

Dom, of course, doesn't understand. It's not that he's afraid of what other people will think, because Dom is only afraid of odd things like lightening and food poisening and himself. He thinks that the light will cheapen their bond, dress it up and make it fake for the rest of the world to see. Billy is afraid that it will grow stale, left forever in unlit corners away from prying eyes. Eventually he backs down, gives in, gives up, because it's better than the risk of losing.

The problem, really, is that to Billy darkness means hiding, and to Dom it means truth.

 

In the end, Billy learns to see by moonlight. He grows to appreciate the way it accentuates the hard planes of Dom's body. More and more often he rolls them over and lets Dom take him from underneath, the light from the window striking silver sparks in Dom's darkened eyes.

He never learns to love it, but he loves Dom, and that's enough, most days.


End file.
